Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70294 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 351(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70294 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 351(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
When it was over, we lay facing each other, our breaths as choppy as our heartbeats as the sweat cooled on our bodies.
“Should we talk?” she asked softly, her eyes meeting mine. Just like that I was hard again.
“Later.”
“Later,” she agreed, sliding over my hips and taking me inside her.
Later came much, much later.
14
Olivia
I knew the bed was empty before I opened my eyes. Somehow, perhaps because Ransom’s scent was faint, or maybe it was the memory of his lips on my forehead sometime in the last hour.
This time, no doubt or anger filled me in his absence. How could it, when he’d so thoroughly—
I jolted up in bed the second I opened my eyes.
I blinked.
Once, twice.
A third for good measure.
“What…” I spoke the word aloud, my eyes darting between my two wrists—the right one with the fake mark, and the left one which now bore an identical mark.
My heart raced as I rubbed at the spot, trying like hell to smear the ink as if Ransom had placed it on the wrong wrist in my sleep.
But it didn’t budge, and something inside me purred at the sight of it. Some inner pieces of my soul clicked into place, snapping and locking with a solidarity I didn’t know existed until that moment.
I flew from the bed, barely dressing in more than an oversized shirt of Ransom’s before I stormed through the house. Every instinct roared at me to find him—my mate.
I needed to claim my mate.
Now. Now. Now.
Centuries of instinct and primal demands raced through my body, so much that I didn’t care that I startled a talem on her way out of one of my sister’s rooms. Didn’t care that anyone could see me racing through the hallways in nothing but Ransom’s black T-shirt.
Didn’t care that I looked like a woman on a mission when I tracked his scent all the way to the edge of the estate where the private bathhouses were. Didn’t even bother to knock as I stormed through the door, the structure clanking against the slick white marble that appeared blue in the faux skylights that illuminated the room.
“Oh, goddamnit, we just got in,” Hawke grumbled, taking one look at me from where he sat in his own individual pool before wending out of sight.
“Shit,” Benedict hissed from the third pool, wending a microsecond after Hawke.
“Olivia?” Ransom furrowed his brow, looking up at me from the middle pool, steam curling around his muscled arms that rested outstretched along the edges. “Is something wrong—” His words died in his throat, his nostrils flaring slightly as I stepped toward him. His pupils dilated, the black nearly consuming all the brilliant blue as he went wholly still in that pool.
A breath and I was in the water, sinking in front of him, not bothering to take off my shirt, too consumed with the need to get near him, touch him, taste him.
“Show me,” he growled, the demand curling everything inside me with a delicious heat.
I raised my left wrist, and he captured it with a move so fast even I hadn’t tracked it. The hot water rippled around us as he drew me to him, his eyes scanning his claiming mark on my skin—a true brand, for mates.
His smile was wide enough to steal my breath as his gaze met mine. “Mate,” he said the word on an exhale. “Fucking finally,” he growled, slanting his mouth over mine.
“You want this, right?” I asked against his kiss.
He leaned back, his eyes sincere.
“I’ve always wanted this,” he admitted. “You?”
I smirked and gripped the back of his neck. “You’re mine,” I said, and he shuddered against me, shifting his hands beneath the water to draw his soaked shirt over my head. He threw it to the side, the wet fabric hitting the tiled floor with a thwack.
“And you’re mine,” he growled right back, kissing his way over my jaw and down my throat. “Forever.”
I nodded, emotion clogging my throat as that bond between us flared to life, so hot and demanding and hungry my fangs distended.
“Mmm,” he groaned, his own matching mine as he grinned, his hands moving along my thighs, hiking my legs until I had to wrap them around his waist. His hard length slid inside me with one easy stroke, the hot water soaking our bodies and making our skin slick.
I gasped and reached behind him to grip the edge of that tile, using it as leverage as I moved on him. I rocked up and down, rolled my hips, giving over completely to my instincts that begged me to claim and claim and claim.
Ransom held my lower back, eyes on me as I rode him in that steaming water, our faces beading with sweat as I increased my pace. Everything inside me tightened and burned with a heat so delicious and so consuming I couldn’t tell where it started or ended. It felt infinite, we felt infinite. And with each thrust, each kiss, each graze of his fingertips over my sensitive skin, the bond between us grew hotter, stronger, twisting and braiding until I had no idea where he began and I ended.